Building Homes

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, there is a lot to welcome in what the noble Baroness has said. I welcome the reintroduction of housing targets, unwisely abandoned by my party 18 months ago. I welcome the flexibility on RTB; receipts for streamlined planning application; cost recovery on planning application; and the long-term housing strategy, on which I hope the Minister will consult widely, particularly with the recent Church document.

On neutrality, what the Minister sounds as if she wants to do is very much like what she voted down last September. Labour said in its manifesto that it would

“implement solutions to unlock the building of homes affected by nutrient neutrality”.

We await that, but the key question, and the missing element in this, is resources. We all want to do what the Minister has said, but her department is unprotected. The forecast is for a 1.6% to a 2.9% reduction every year for the next three years. What she has announced is going to cost a lot of money. I welcome a reinvigorated council house programme. She wants more affordable houses and fewer houses for sale, and within affordable housing she wants more social houses on social rents. That is going to cost. How confident is she that she has the resources? When she goes to the Chancellor, might not she say what she said yesterday? She said that

“if we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/7/24; col. 1036.]

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments and question. The point is that, without growing the economy, as we need to do, we will not be able to afford any of the public services that we need. That is the first priority of this Government. But we have an immediate housing crisis, so we will do what we can to solve it now, and develop things further as we begin to create the economic growth we need to solve it. But it is not just a problem of government funding; we need to create that affordable housing. The noble Lord will be as aware as I am that it has been more and more difficult to deliver the social and affordable housing that we need through things like Section 106 agreements and other forms of planning gain, so we will need to assist with that as well. But it is a priority that we tackle the homelessness crisis now and we start on the journey of improving the housing supply, because that is the only long-term way to solve the housing crisis in this country. It will take some time to develop the economic background to do that fully, but we can make a start right now.